“‘My ambitious anticipations,’ says Morton, in the story, were as boundless as they were various and conflicting.  There was not a path which leads to glory in which I was not destined to gather laurels.  As a warrior, I would conquer and overrun the world; as a statesman, I would reorganize and govern it; as a historian, I would consign it all to immortality; and, in my leisure moments, I would be a great poet and a man of the world.’

     “Who can doubt that in this passage of his story he is picturing his
     own visions, one of the fairest of which was destined to become
     reality?

“But there was another element in his character, which those who knew him best recognized as one with which he had to struggle hard, —­that is, a modesty which sometimes tended to collapse into self- distrust.  This, too, betrays itself in the sentences which follow those just quoted:—­

“‘In short,’ says Morton, ’I was already enrolled in that large category of what are called young men of genius, . . . men of whom unheard-of things are expected; till after long preparation comes a portentous failure, and then they are forgotten. . . .  Alas! for the golden imaginations of our youth. . . .  They are all disappointments.  They are bright and beautiful, but they fade.’”

...........................

The President appointed Professor Lowell to write the Memoir of Mr. Quincy, and Dr. Holmes that of Mr. Motley, for the Society’s “Proceedings.”

Professor William Everett then spoke as follows: 

“There is one incident, sir, in Mr. Motley’s career that has not been mentioned to-day, which is, perhaps, most vividly remembered by those of us who were in Europe at the outbreak of our civil war in 1861.  At that time, the ignorance of Englishmen, friendly or otherwise, about America, was infinite:  they knew very little of us, and that little wrong.  Americans were overwhelmed with questions, taunts, threats, misrepresentations, the outgrowth of ignorance, and ignoring worse than ignorance, from every class of Englishmen.  Never was an authoritative exposition of our hopes and policy worse needed; and there was no one to do it.  The outgoing diplomatic agents represented a bygone order of things; the representatives of Mr. Lincoln’s administration had not come.  At that time of anxiety, Mr. Motley, living in England as a private person, came forward with two letters in the ‘Times,’ which set forth the cause of the United States once and for all.  No unofficial, and few official, men could have spoken with such authority, and been so certain of obtaining a hearing from Englishmen.  Thereafter, amid all the clouds of falsehood and ridicule which we had to encounter, there was one lighthouse fixed on a rock to which we could go for foothold, from which we could not be driven, and against which all assaults were impotent.